Swindon Borough Council Budget plans

The huge financial challenges facing the public sector cannot have escaped anyone’s attention in recent months. What I hope is that everyone now realises that it will probably affect them or their families personally. It will mean big changes to the council services they use and, perhaps, take for granted.

So what do multi-billion pounds budget cut announcements actually mean for Swindon? In short it means £45 million pounds worth of reductions over the next three years or a 33% reduction in our current net budget.

If that were not challenging enough, we face an immediate pressure because some of the reductions in funding to Councils are being applied right now. For example, £1.4 million pounds worth of grant funding for the current year has been withdrawn immediately.

So, please take time to read what we say, because you might have ideas or practical help that you can contribute in return. We’re all in this together and we all need to understand the challenge.

To help get you started we have written some details about the recent history of the budget situation. Please have a read through this as it gives a crucial insight into the specific challenges we face in Swindon.

One response to “Swindon Borough Council Budget plans”

I’m very unimpressed. First off, the council has an appalling record of not listening to its residents, so putting this one out to ‘public consultation’ seems dubious. Funny how they always ‘know best’ until they’re finally over a barrel: Now ‘difficult decisions’ become collective! I wonder why…

We all know that the cuts will come from things like museums, the arts, youth workers etc – its inevitable and completely fits in with the standard conservative cabinet outlook, in fact it’s likely to give them the excuse to finally cut back on things they’ve dissaproved of for years, but never had public support for. Now they can say things like ‘ Sell Lower Shaw Farm – or lose 50% of the provision of care for the elderly’

My suggestion is that ALL SBC employees (middle managers and up, plus councillors over that threshold) earning a net of more than £30k per year to take a 5% paycut until the next general election… (Oh, and fire 50% of the parking attendants as prrof that they’re not after all actually being run as a net revenue raiser for the council)